Forvik Ferry Terminal
If you are traveling by car along Norway’s coast every so often the journey is brought to a halt by lines of vehicles waiting for a ferry to cross one of the many fjords. The boat-trips are often short and the lines of cars are long. At Forvik on the Helgeland coast the ferry lands on the dock of an 18th century tavern. As modern boats get larger and the number of tourists grows the old dock can no longer support the terminal function, hence it was decided to build a new ferry terminal on the other side of a small bay, leaving the tavern without direct contact with the traveling crowds.
The brief was therefore – in addition to design the landscape intervention and a small service building for the travelers – to establish a connection between the old tavern and the new terminal, and to enhance the link between the tavern and the old church across the bay. Accordingly the theme for the small service building became the bond between two places that are separated by time and distance.
For the landscape part of the project the main focus has been to minimize the traffic areal and to give the intervention in the vulnerable coastal terrain a distinct, but subordinate form. This is achieved by eliminating ditches and retaining walls, carefully planning the cutting of bedrock and the forming of new ground and surface drainage.
For the service building we have tried to achieve a structure that embodies the idea of two places being connected across space. This is achieved by making a transparent building through which one does not only see the old tavern, but every part of the new structure.
